HGH - Heartland Group Holdings

[Cyclical]

Good news: Heartland now stands alone with the cheapest home loan rate in the market at 1.99% with its online offering (HSBC raised its rates from 1.99% to 2.25%)

now a significant quarter of a percent gap between heartland and everyone else now at 2.25-2.29%

https://www.interest.co.nz/personal-...fter-two-month

This is a brand new product and market segment for HGH - charging the same as everyone else is not going to win them any marketshare, especially with the automated online nature of the HGH offering (which reduces costs and enables the lower price)

Kiwibank is driving me nuts so I thought I'd take a look at moving the mortgage to Heartland. A quick phone call to discuss with them at a high level our circumstances. The person I spoke to was very helpful and suggested I do the quick application process online and see where we go from there.

So I did the application and to my mind we have plenty of equity, good incomes, easy serviceability, great credit rating, what's not to like I thought... Got to the end, did the quick little survey that asks your opinion on what the application process was like, where I put in that it was a positive, quick and relatively painless experience. Clicked ok only for it to come back with a message to say we don't meet the criteria, or something like that. Click here to understand why, which I did and that just took me back to the home page. Excellent.

Rang them up again, spoke to someone different and explained what had happened. Got the response, something along the lines of "we don't really have a mortgage team you can speak to, but you can email us through the website..." Back on the website, composed a message, hit Send, to which a pop up says "An error occurred. Please try again later."

Not a great experience. And as a shareholder, I'm really disappointed.

Not hard when they write less than $10m in home loans lol.

It's purely a marketing ploy. And a good one!

Seems you're not wrong.

Best marketing ploy they ever did was to become a BANK ......has more credibility than a finance company and get mums and dads to deposit money with them.

Even their CFO publicly said it was just a marketing ploy

Today they lost some credibility in my eyes. There may well be valid reason why they didn't like my application, but if they're going to have this online application process, they need to get it sorted out as presently it's rubbish.

[percy]

Ring Chris Flood at Heartland.
09 927 9139 or 0272266508

[winner69]

The heartland digital things I’ve experienced leave a lot to be desired

Fintech they aren’t

[winner69]

Maybe you are far too rich for a Heartland loan cyclical?

Was it for a stand alone dwelling - I know somebody who was rejected because their house wasn’t.

[Cyclical]

Maybe you are far too rich for a Heartland loan cyclical?

Was it for a stand alone dwelling - I know somebody who was rejected because their house wasn’t.

Haha, if only!

Some of the questions it asks through the application process are if it's a stand alone dwelling on its own section, which is what we have.

I think they do have pretty narrow criteria, but it shouldn't be cloaked in mystery.

[Cyclical]

Ring Chris Flood at Heartland.
09 927 9139 or 0272266508

Thanks Percy but I don't think I'm quite ready to escalate to the CEO.

[percy]

Thanks Percy but I don't think I'm quite ready to escalate to the CEO.

He is very approachable,and I see it as part of his job helping a shareholder/customer.I am sure he does too.
I have a lot of time for him.

[thegreatestben]

I did that process and was approved. I was impressed as it only took about 5 minutes

[winner69]

Thanks Percy but I don't think I'm quite ready to escalate to the CEO.

He says on the website “When you need us, we’ll be there."

As percy says Chris a good guy ...I’m sure he’d appreciate your feedback and probably sort it out as well

[Cyclical]

He is very approachable,and I see it as part of his job helping a shareholder/customer.I am sure he does too.
I have a lot of time for him.

Ok, thanks, I'll take a look. Easy to just abandon it as a potential customer, but as a shareholder, I'm keen to understand what the underlying issues are and to find out if they're interested in fixing/improving the experience, or if that's just how they roll.

I did that process and was approved. I was impressed as it only took about 5 minutes

Good to know it does actually work for some.

[Rawz]

Cyclical, as a customer I would be frustrated with your experience but as a shareholder I wouldn't worry.

HGH are great at reverse mortgages, vehicle, construction, forestry, agri and transport finance.
Banks (the real banks) are great at home loans and credit cards. Let them both do what they do best I say.
And let them allocate precious capital to those areas they excel in.

This offer is all about them testing the market and their online systems to see if they can write loans with as little employee involvement as possible. That is why the customer service rep told you there isn't a mortgage team to talk to, because there literally isn't by design. If you cant tick all the boxes and get the computer to say yes then they don't want to know ya. If you can then great, you get the good rate and HGH spend only a few FTE hours on closing out the deal.

The banks have personal bankers spending hours with customers sitting in expensive branches. HGH trying to avoid this model.

HGH Fintech soonish maybe

[Cyclical]

Cyclical, as a customer I would be frustrated with your experience but as a shareholder I wouldn't worry.

HGH are great at reverse mortgages, vehicle, construction, forestry, agri and transport finance.
Banks (the real banks) are great at home loans and credit cards. Let them both do what they do best I say.
And let them allocate precious capital to those areas they excel in.

This offer is all about them testing the market and their online systems to see if they can write loans with as little employee involvement as possible. That is why the customer service rep told you there isn't a mortgage team to talk to, because there literally isn't by design. If you cant tick all the boxes and get the computer to say yes then they don't want to know ya. If you can then great, you get the good rate and HGH spend only a few FTE hours on closing out the deal.

The banks have personal bankers spending hours with customers sitting in expensive branches. HGH trying to avoid this model.

HGH Fintech soonish maybe

Yep, good post and good points, Rawz. I found an email in my junk off the back of the failed application, so have replied to that and will see where it goes. I'm probably stuck with Kiwibank for another year anyway due to the cash contribution effectively tying is in for 3 years, but regardless, will be interesting to go down the rabbit hole and see what the process looks like for potential Heartland customers.

I suppose from my perspective, if they're going to make a play at the mortgage market (pretty high profile one at that due to the sharp rate), then they should either do it right from the get go, or just not bother, as a failed foray can be quite damaging. That said, the issue with my app may well have been something as simple as checking the wrong box. If revisited the criteria and fail to see any that we'd fail on, so may have been a mistake, or the system doesn't like our address.

[Cyclical]

Was thinking the same peat

Also hard to maintain that huge 4.4% NIM when lending sub 2%

I imagine you know how it works, w69, but if not, Snoopy explained it well a few months back. He'll be along shortly to put me straight, but something like 15% of Heartland's / depositor's money at whatever cost that may be, then the other 85% from the RBNZ printing machine at the OCR. All adds up to a ~4% NIM. The caveat here is that I may have all that wrong!

[percy]

https://sendy.tarawera.co.nz/l/J6oLV...xpfZJibsTIlf8A

[Beau]

Thanks for sharing Percy great to see everything on track with reverse mortgages.

[Scrunch]

I imagine you know how it works, w69, but if not, Snoopy explained it well a few months back. He'll be along shortly to put me straight, but something like 15% of Heartland's / depositor's money at whatever cost that may be, then the other 85% from the RBNZ printing machine at the OCR. All adds up to a ~4% NIM. The caveat here is that I may have all that wrong!

The 15 / 85 is how a 4% net margin becomes a good return on equity.

[LaserEyeKiwi]

https://sendy.tarawera.co.nz/l/J6oLV...xpfZJibsTIlf8A

Excellent news (heartland reverse mortgage enquiries increased 39% in 1st quarter) - although I find it strange this sort of material information wasn't released via NZX market announcement and instead is in an interview to a relatively small website.

[winner69]

Excellent news (heartland reverse mortgage enquiries increased 39% in 1st quarter) - although I find it strange this sort of material information wasn't released via NZX market announcement and instead is in an interview to a relatively small website.

Overall profit expectations still within guidance so no need to disclose anything.

Good sign though ...where would you draw the line as to what stuff you tell the market?

Anyway the increase was probably expected / forecasted to make up for poor H1 - NZ Reverse Mortgages: Net operating income decreased -13.8% compared with 1H2020 to $11.2m.

[Snow Leopard]

.... a relatively small website.

That relatively small website is part of the same empire as this forum.
You are expected as a poster here to read it avidly (thus getting the inside line on the great companies on the NZX) and click at least 33% of the adverts to help pay for hosting your posts.

Disc:

[caveman]

The on-line mortgage application doesn't seem to ask for the purpose of a loan like most banks do these days.... So, can I shift my floating loan on my standalone property to HGH and use the funds to buy more HGH shares? ...or would they regard that as a risky/poor investment?